Did Liberalism Win? It's Not Clear ; for Some Nations, Values of Democracy Take Back Seat to Mercantilist Goals

Article excerpt

Centuries of superiority and global reach seemed to reach a new
summit with the collapse of the Soviet Union, as the countries,
values and civilization of the West appeared to have won the dark,
difficult battle with communism.

That victory seemed especially sweet with the turn of China
toward capitalism, which many thought presaged a slow evolution
toward middle-class demands for individual rights and transparent
justice -- toward a form of democracy.

But is the embrace of Western values inevitable? Are Western
values, essentially Judeo-Christian ones, truly universal?

The history of the last decade is a bracing antidote to such easy
thinking. The rise of authoritarian capitalism has been a blow to
assumptions, made popular by Francis Fukuyama, that liberal
democracy has proved to be the most reliable and lasting political
system.

With the collapse of communism, "what we may be witnessing," Mr.
Fukuyama wrote hopefully in 1989, "is the end point of mankind's
ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal
democracy as the final form of human government."

But couple the tightening of Chinese authoritarianism with
Russia's turn toward revanchism and dictatorship, and then add the
rise of radical Islam, with its violent intolerance, and the grand
victory of Western liberalism can seem hollow, its values under
threat even within its own societies.

"1989 was perceived as the victory of universalism, the end of
history, but for all the others in the world it wasn't a post-Cold
War world but a postcolonial one," said Ivan Krastev, director of
the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia.

It seemed to many in Asia and Africa to be the end of Western
ideological supremacy, given that both liberalism and communism are
Western creations with universal ambitions.

After all, Mr. Krastev noted, "both liberalism and communism were
dominated and shaped by the West -- but who is the legitimate son of
the Enlightenment and who is the bastard one?"

Many of the emerging powerhouses of globalization, like Brazil,
are interested in democracy and the rule of law, but not in the
preachments of the West, which they regard as laced with hypocrisy.
The United States' criticism of Venezuela, for instance, is simply
seen as a reflection of geopolitics, not morality.

Even Russia argues both for exceptionalism ("the third Rome") and
for its own, more perfect representation of Western civilization,
claiming that the West is self-interested, decadent and
hypocritical, defending universal values but freely ignoring them
when it pleases.

The fight over values is not limited to democracy, Mr. Krastev
argues, seeing deep disagreements over gender politics. "We think
the world is divided by individualism and democracy, but it's the
sexual divide," he said -- with radical disagreements over the
proper place of women and the rights of gay people.

Many in the West may consider gender equality and sexual freedom
as basic human rights, but they are clearly not universally held.

Conservative Russia, in its rejection of Western liberal values
of sexual equality and choice, finds common cause with many in
Africa and with the religious teachings of Islam, the Vatican,
fundamentalist Protestants and Orthodox Jews.

Extreme interpretations of religion, especially in areas of great
instability and insecurity, can be a comforting or inspiring
response to the confusions of modern life, and they can soon become
an enemy to religious freedom and tolerance for others, notes Robert
Cooper. A British diplomat who helped build a European foreign
policy in Brussels, he defined the problem of failed and postmodern
states in his book "The Breaking of Nations."

A quick look at anthropology shows us that "what we consider
universal values are not so universal," he said. …